


Hurry Back

by BlasphemousProphet



Category: Sherlock (TV), johnlock - Fandom
Genre: Happy Ending, M/M, Post Season 3, True Love, everything is fixed, mary doesn't matter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 17:08:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2236845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlasphemousProphet/pseuds/BlasphemousProphet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When John finds Sherlock at a gay bar, hopes begin to rise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hurry Back

It’s eight o’clock, Wednesday night, Mary’s at home with the baby and John has tracked Isaac Whitney down to some seedy gay bar. John has sent him home in a taxi and retired to the bar for a finger of scotch. John is exhausted, looking around the club, and he sees-he can’t believe it, he’s furious and before he can process why he is furious he has downed his glass of scotch and marched over to the corner of the room where Sherlock Holmes is talking animatedly to a shortish blonde man.  
“What the fuck are you doing here?” John snaps. Sherlock’s eyes go wide.  
“What are you doing here?” Sherlock babbles. “I thought you weren’t gay, three continents Watson, what about Mary, why didn’t-“  
“I’m not gay,” John interrupts.  
“I’m going,” announces Sherlock’s companion. Sherlock barely glances his way, rubbing his forehead with his hand, slumping back into the booth awkwardly.  
“Then why are you here?”  
“Isaac Whitney,” John says, and he knows that’s all he has to say, because Sherlock will remember, he always remembers-  
“First a crack den, now here? Bit much, isn’t it?” says Sherlock and John can’t help it, he starts laughing and Sherlock joins in and it almost feels like before Reichenbach but no, everything’s changed, John can’t go back it, it doesn’t matter-  
“So where is he?” says Sherlock, standing up, putting on his old familiar coat, a bit tattered now, a bit worn, a bit like Sherlock himself, who has never quite gone back to the person he was before…he left.  
“Sent him home in a cab. You need a new coat,” says John automatically.  
“This one’s fine.”  
John shrugs.  
“Shall we go?” says Sherlock.  
“What about your friend?”  
Sherlock doesn’t answer, just starts leading the way to the exit, he knows exactly where the back door is and of course he would, he’s Sherlock, he knows London like the back of his hand but it also seems like he’s been here before and John remembers that Sherlock never told him why he was at Moony’s.  
Sherlock calls a taxi, authoritatively summons, more like, and ushers John into it. John can’t help being shocked at the touch. Had Sherlock always been like this? John can’t remember.  
“Where to, gents?”  
“Baker Street,” says John. Sherlock is staring at him.  
“What?”  
“Don’t you want to go home?”  
Mary. The baby. It all hits John like a brick.  
“I’ll take you home first,” offers John.  
“I’m not drunk,” says Sherlock.  
“I know,” says John.  
They are silent, Sherlock staring fixedly out the window, John staring fixedly at him.  
“So what was the case?” asks John, finally breaking the silence.  
“No case.”  
“No case? You were just there…for fun?”  
Sherlock doesn’t answer the question.  
“Mary’s texting you,” he says.  
Where are you?MM  
John can’t think of a thing to write back. Met my old friend at a gay bar and started thinking things I had never allowed myself to think? Ready to throw my marriage away in a second? Feeling not so tired for the first time in ages.  
“Tell her I asked you on a case,” says Sherlock.  
Sherlock. Always knows what to say, knows people, knows John…  
“You’re more than just people,” mumbles Sherlock.  
The meter dings. John pays. He follows Sherlock into 221B.  
I need you home. MM  
The initials are an insult, a reminder of their sham of a marriage and John texts back-  
He needs me more. JW  
He has picked up Sherlock’s habit of texting short, terse sentences followed by initials. Oh, Sherlock, John thinks. I would text you pages and pages if you would let me. It’s almost too painful to be back in his old flat, with Sherlock.  
“I don’t,” says Sherlock.  
“Don’t what?”  
“Need you more.”  
“Maybe I do,” says John and Sherlock absorbs this with an odd look on his face, watching John settle into his old chair, John closing his eyes for a brief moment because it’s so familiar and melancholy but perfect, as though he has erased the last five years of his life, all that wasted time when he could have been at Baker Street, cleaning up Sherlock’s extravagant messes.  
“This place is filthy,” says John. He is cleaning, sorting through Sherlock’s old medical journals, the bag of fingernails Sherlock has stuffed into the fireplace, the eye dropper on the kitchen table, the needle, the rubber band, the silver spoon-  
John can pretend he hasn’t seen it, but it isn’t worth it. Sherlock already knows, the selfish git.  
“What is this?”  
“For an experiment,” Sherlock says, and this time the lie sits hollowly between them, pushing them apart, and John really doesn’t know what to do.  
John! MM  
Call me. MM  
“Call your wife,” says Sherlock, his tone has a biting edge to it he has used on everyone else but never on John, so John reaches for his phone and Sherlock swipes every single object on the kitchen table into the garbage cleanly, wipes his hands on his expensive pants, pulls out a bag of white powder from a kitchen drawer, throws that away as well, and pours water into the garbage, ruining its contents and John can barely think, his mind is whirring, and he barely registers Mary pick up on the other end before he hangs up.  
“Thank you,” says John.  
“I was planning to do it anyway.”  
“No you weren’t.”  
Sherlock is quiet. John hasn’t seen much of Sherlock in a while, he forgot how open his face can be, how changed he was after Reichenbach, how hard it became to look Sherlock in the eyes when his eyes were so painfully honest. John looks at him now.  
“Good night, John,” says Sherlock. “You should go home.”  
“Sherlock…are you happy?” the words fall out of John’s mouth despite his best efforts to resist them. John asks a question even if he already knows the answer. He picked that habit up from Sherlock also.  
“Are you?”  
John sighs, feels at least a dozen memories sweeping through him.  
“No,” he admits.  
Sherlock hesitates, then asks, “What are you thinking, John?”  
“Of the ashtray you stole for me from Buckingham Palace,” John answers honestly. “I smashed it while you were gone. I couldn’t bear to look at it.”  
“Can you look now?” say Sherlock, and John lifts his eyes to Sherlock’s, who is scanning his face with an infinite amount of concern, and John can’t tear his eyes away. John nods, an imperceptible gesture that Sherlock registers because he’s Sherlock and he’s perfect and he is made for John and John is suffering a thousand regrets.  
John. Are you alright? MM  
“I miss you,” says John.  
“So come back.”  
Sherlock and John are staring at each other like they haven’t in years and something switches inside John and everything matters again and John can feel, and it’s good and he wants too and he can see the future and it is bright.  
“I will,” John promises.  
“I’ll be here,” says Sherlock.  
“I know,” says John, and he believes Sherlock, and he understands him, but he needs to speak to Mary because he owes her that much-  
“Hurry back,” says Sherlock when John is halfway down the hall and John can’t help it, he comes back, he grabs Sherlock’s perfect trembling face, he’s given away half of himself and he doesn’t want it back, it happened a long time ago and John just wants to feel whole again.  
“I will,” says John, and he can see by Sherlock’s face that he doesn’t believe him, that Sherlock thinks the minute he leaves 221B the spell will be broken and John will pretend it never happened and the fact that Sherlock is resigning himself to this breaks John into a million more fragments and he says  
“I love you. I always have. I always will,” and Sherlock doesn’t have to respond, which is good because he can’t, and anyways, John already knows the answer, and John squeezes Sherlock’s hand and runs out the door because the sooner he goes the sooner he comes home and that’s all John’s ever wanted is to be home with Sherlock.


End file.
